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One Stone
Lyrical poems map the reconstruction of a woman's life after an exodus from a twenty year marriage. Pelman takes this all-too common sorrow and places it in the natural world. The poems trace a conscious reconstruction of from a narrow place of limitations through a metaphorical desert, towards joy, the eventual promised land. In the process of creating and refining the poem itself, she has found a parallel healing of the spirit. “If words could build a world, like love / one stone would be enough.”
- GenresPoetry
110 pages, Paperback
First published June 6, 2005
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January 28, 2022
And when there is no Innisfree,
no bee-loud glade or anything more
than a townhouse crowded with things
none of htem growing or green:
when the gray pavements pound like
jack hammer through cement,
and the linnet's wings whisper
a feeble song, when
crickets are crushed under booted
feet in a hurry to get anywhere -
What will be heard
in the deep heart's core?
* * *
In the bare corridor
I hear the petals
float
around my feet.
They gather in large clouds.
The room beside me
looks out to the sea -
the hills,
the sky
all slide into a spume of green.
How like flowers
to cleave into one
blaze of light,
resplendent like a god.
They are
companions, rich
and empty, they lift me.
My lover, visible
in the corridor,
Cleanse me.
* * *
You're married and hands get red washing
dishes washing socks and underwear washing
the thoughts you shouldn't have -
You're married and the couples march two
by two down the aisle, into
the ark. And the waters rise and the
mountains disappear and the earth
is a placid lake and you're married
and your hands are red with blood,
the cut ribbons of dreams splashing on the deck
and you're married and the sun smiles
on all its people and the waters recede
and the sky is red with unwashed
desire and you're married and the sky
is black and your hands are red and
you wash and you wash -
no bee-loud glade or anything more
than a townhouse crowded with things
none of htem growing or green:
when the gray pavements pound like
jack hammer through cement,
and the linnet's wings whisper
a feeble song, when
crickets are crushed under booted
feet in a hurry to get anywhere -
What will be heard
in the deep heart's core?
- I Will Arise and Go Now, I, after W.B. Yeats's "Lake Isle of Innisfree", pg. 32
* * *
In the bare corridor
I hear the petals
float
around my feet.
They gather in large clouds.
The room beside me
looks out to the sea -
the hills,
the sky
all slide into a spume of green.
How like flowers
to cleave into one
blaze of light,
resplendent like a god.
They are
companions, rich
and empty, they lift me.
My lover, visible
in the corridor,
Cleanse me.
- Resplendent Like a God, after Pablo Neruda, pg. 71
* * *
You're married and hands get red washing
dishes washing socks and underwear washing
the thoughts you shouldn't have -
You're married and the couples march two
by two down the aisle, into
the ark. And the waters rise and the
mountains disappear and the earth
is a placid lake and you're married
and your hands are red with blood,
the cut ribbons of dreams splashing on the deck
and you're married and the sun smiles
on all its people and the waters recede
and the sky is red with unwashed
desire and you're married and the sky
is black and your hands are red and
you wash and you wash -
- You're Married, from a line by e.e. cummings, pg. 80
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